


At The Edge Of The World

by TheSummoningDark



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-10-22 05:27:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10690689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSummoningDark/pseuds/TheSummoningDark
Summary: As far as ex-Jaeger Pilot Goodnight Robicheaux is concerned, he was consigned to the scrapheap from the day he woke up in the infirmary with the wounds that killed his copilot seared in circuitboard patterns into his skin.Marshal Chisolm has other ideas.





	1. No Pulse

**Author's Note:**

> This is set loosely in the same universe as [Thrilling](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/)'s excellent Vasquez/Faraday PacRim fic [Get Off Your Throne](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9178063), which I highly recommend. The continuity is a little hazy, but this fic is definitely set before that one.
> 
> At the moment I plan to update weekly, unless in a burst of inspiration/motivation I finish it much faster than I'm expecting.

He could have made a fair guess at the topic of their informal little meeting before arriving, but Sam greeting him with a bottle of whiskey already out only confirms it.

His manner is calm as he pours out two glasses; not a million miles removed from the serious, competent young ranger Goody met in the training program a lifetime ago, but tempered now. The years have given him a certain gravity, time and the demands of the job putting grey in his hair and lines around his eyes. They live and work in what might charitably be called a high-stress environment. As pilots they'd known that the weight of this fight rested squarely on their shoulders, but there's a different and infinitely more frustrating demand in being one of those left behind, sending brash young rangers out to fight and die and being helpless in the moment to do anything but listen.

"I'm sure you remember how this went last time," Goody says lightly, taking a quick, steadying gulp of whiskey before setting the glass aside lest the ripples betray the tremor in his hand. "And the time before. And, if memory serves, the time before that--"

"You know the situation," Sam replies, calm and unyielding. And the problem is, he _does_. They're desperately hard up for drift compatible pilot pairs, and with the torn up skeleton that used to be Widow Rose mostly repaired and almost ready to be rechristened, they can't afford to wait any longer to crew her. Having a functional jaeger standing idle is appallingly bad for morale. The spiral that's bound to descend into is absolutely the last thing they need right now.

It's been a rough few months. Sam looks tired, sitting against the edge of his desk with his glass cradled loosely in his hands and his head lowered. But then don't they all, lately. They've seen too many jaegers come back in pieces - or not at all, lost to the cold waters of the unfathomable Pacific - for there to be any shine left to wear off. It's almost touching, in a grim sort of way, that Sam doesn't feel the need to keep up the persona of the unfazed, implacable Marshall here when it's just the two of them. Not that there would be much point in it. It's been a long time since they were last in each others' heads, but after all these years, even without the benefit of the drift they still know each other entirely too well.

Goody reaches for his glass again, the burn of the whiskey a welcome distraction from the choice he's being asked to make here. "It'll be just like all the other times, Sam," he says softly, not man enough to look up from his drink. Sam sighs.

"I can't make you." Translation, _I can but I'm not going to_ , a fact Goody is far too pathetically grateful for to resent. "But I need you to try. We're running out of options, and I can't let a pilot of your caliber go to waste."

Goody knocks back what's left in his glass and stands. "I'll think about it," he says, holding Sam's eyes as he sets his glass down on the desk. "I can't promise anything, but I'll think about it. Either way, lord I hope you have a plan B."

Sam snorts something that isn't quite a laugh and claps him on the shoulder. "We're a long ways south of B already, old friend."

 

He's tense and on edge when he leaves Sam's office, his hands in his pockets, pressed flat against his thighs to still the way they want to tremble. He keeps his head down and greets the people he passes in the corridor with short nods, not slowing his pace in any way that might suggest a want for conversation.

It's late enough that the sheltered little gantry outside the loading bays where the smokers tend to congregate is blessedly deserted when he slips out, the silence broken only by the blustering of the wind and the steady drum of rain beating off the overhang. The air is cool and wet, heavy with the salt tang of the ocean; somewhere beyond the low, dark clouds the sun is slipping down behind the horizon, the already dim light dimming almost imperceptibly further. On evenings like this the shatterdome feels as though it stands on the edge of the world. One last watchtower looking out over the abyss.

Goody's hands are shaking as he cups them around his lighter, guarding the tiny, flickering flame against the questing gusts of wind seeking to extinguish it. If he hadn't drowned his inclination toward poetry in cheap booze a long time ago, he might almost see some metaphor in that; some brief flame, fierce and defiant and ultimately doomed, burning bright for a moment in hands cupped against the cold dark howling to consume it. 

The cigarette catches and he inhales deeply, taking comfort in the steadying familiarity of the acrid taste of smoke. He leans against the guardrail and swallows against the sick panic fighting to claw its way up his throat, eyes fixed unseeing on the ash and embers spiralling down toward the dark waters far below, crashing again and again against the foundations of the shatterdome. Much as he's grateful for the solitude, it's a dangerous thing to have too much of. Dark thoughts have a way of creeping enticingly up in quiet moments. It's easier to forget when there's light and noise and conversation for a distraction.

He taps ash absently off the end of the cigarette and takes another deep drag on it. He'd tried to quit once, years ago now; back when it still seemed to matter if he got lung cancer when he was sixty. These days, making it that far seems a hilarious fantasy. And even if he does manage to live long enough for his pack-a-day habit to catch up with him, it still seems an easier way to go than trampled underfoot in a landfall or burning alive in kaiju blue. Let the cigarettes kill him. At least he got to decide that's something he's at peace with.

Light spills out onto the gantry as the access door swings open, and Goody glances over, tensing, only to relax again as he recognises the familiar silhouette stepping through it. Billy nods amiably in silent greeting as he ambles over to join him at the guardrail. Loose hair flutters around his face in the wind, the collar of his jacket turned up against the elements. Goody offers him the pack of cigarettes.

Billy shakes his head. "Got my own," he says, producing a roll-up from somewhere in the depths of his jacket. If he were a suspicious-minded sort, Goody might take Billy's predilection for rolling his own in conjunction with the peculiar smell of the smoke from them, and conclude that perhaps they contained something a little more exciting than tobacco. Fortunately for everyone, though, he's an innocent soul. One of these days he might even be able to say so with a straight face.

They smoke together in companionable silence for a while, shoulder to shoulder against the cold as the wind blows fitfully around them, and despite himself Goody can't help but relax a little. There's always been something steadying in the air of unruffled calm Billy carries with him.

"I didn't see you around at dinner," Billy comments after a while, inspecting the smouldering end of his cigarette critically.

"I had a meeting with our fearless leader," Goody replies offhandedly, as though he doesn't know perfectly well that he's inviting all kinds of questions he doesn't want to answer regarding the nature of said meeting. He takes another draw on his cigarette and makes a face, flicking away the burnt-down stub and reaching for the pack to pull out another. 

Billy offers him a light. "Rough day?"

"Aren't they all?"

Certainly they have been recently. Things have been difficult since they lost Widow Rose, dependent on other shatterdomes to pick up the slack for them until they can make up their complement again, and the lack of success of the scramble to find a pilot pair to crew the repaired jaeger is wearing on everyone's nerves. They're too used to being stretched thin to deal well with this kind of limbo. It reflects poorly on all of them to be unable to field a functional jaeger in case of emergency, and the longer that state of affairs draws out, the more people start to wonder if they're making a difference at all.

Goody sighs. "Chisolm asked me to try to find a copilot again," he says quietly. The silence that draws out in the wake of that admission is heavy with unasked questions.

"Does that mean you're finally going to let me try?" Billy inquires eventually, all faux-innocence. Goody smiles broadly as though the thought of letting Billy get any more intimately acquainted with the shipwreck that is his subconscious - to say nothing of certain filthy fantasies in which he has a starring role - isn't viscerally terrifying. He isn't rich enough in friends to be willing to risk losing one of the closest he has left. Perhaps he's fighting a losing battle by even trying to pretend to be a well-adjusted and functional human being, but if nothing else he still has _some_ pride. He'll hang onto this damn facade for as long as those around him are polite enough to act like they buy it.

"I'm sure you have enough on your plate without letting yourself in for that," he replies, affecting a flippancy he certainly doesn't feel. If nothing else at least there's no need for him to elaborate. Billy had been there for the aftermath of the last disastrous attempt, seen it spiral beyond recovery before LOCCENT pulled the plug. He knows it was his own damn fault for letting himself be goaded into even attempting a neural handshake with Faraday. There wasn't a snowflake's chance in hell of it going well in the best case - no-one's ever been able to stop him from chasing the rabbit - but even they could never have predicted just how cruelly their demons would feed into each other.

Billy nudges their shoulders gently together. "Bet you I've seen worse," he says, a trace of a wry smile curling the corner of his lips. 

Lord and he probably has. Billy has precisely the opposite problem to Goody when it comes to being paired up with a copilot; steady as the proverbial rock, calm and self-contained, his neural handshake record remains yet untarnished by a failed attempt. Accordingly, he's been stuck on the reserve list for some years now, kept back in case of emergency. Command tend to give preference to pairs that work only in unique combination. Occasionally frustrating as that may be, there's an undeniable logic to it. It makes little sense to waste the only partner who'd work with a given pilot by pairing them up with someone who can drift with essentially anyone.

"I'd hate to spoil your record," Goody replies, automatically deflecting. He doesn't doubt Billy's almost supernatural ability to keep a connection stable, but he's had too many failed attempts over the years to grant himself the luxury of optimism. He was consigned to the scrapheap from the day he woke up in the infirmary with the wounds that killed his copilot seared in circuitboard patterns into his skin.

Billy shakes his head. "Just...think about it." 

Goody gives an entirely insincere promise to do so, and quietly excuses himself.

 

He doesn't sleep well that night. Not that he does most nights, waking up gasping and shaking from nightmares on the rare occasions insomnia doesn't haunt him til dawn. Every rivet and rust spot in the ceiling above his bunk is familiar. 

The shatterdome is never silent. The low hum of the ventilation systems underpins every moment, so all-pervasive as to only ever be noticeable in the rare spaces where it stops; the distant tread of feet and murmur of hushed voices from the night shift echoes through the corridors. They've all made a home of sorts here, this disparate collection of people, holding close to each other in the dark and stubbornly building their lighthouse at the edge of the world. Sooner or later their cliff face will crumble, worn away to nothing by the inexorable beating of the waves below. They know that. But for now, every attack turned back is a victory. Every person who gets to die an unremarkable human death from old age or illness or stupid accidents is a victory.

It wasn't always like this. Once upon a time they thought they could win. They could drive the kaiju back, seal the breach, make the world safe again. That would have been a cause worth dying for; to ensure that no-one else had to ever again. But instead they're left with an uneasy equilibrium, a limbo state with no promise of an end. Young pilots die in their jaegers so that the next generation will have their chance to do the same.

Sometimes, in the hazy space between sleep and waking, he forgets. He'd do anything to know how to hold onto that fleeting moment of blissful emptiness; thoughtless, mindless, untouched by memory. He'd do anything to know how to stop feeling his copilot die over and over again in his nightmares.

It seems an eternity ago now that he'd joined the jaeger program, recruited straight out of the military along with so many others. They'd taken so much pride in what they were doing back then. There was a sense that they were part of something so much bigger than themselves, doing together what no-one could alone. They'd built their tools out of scrap metal and stubborn determination, setting out to hold the line at all costs. And they'd _done_ it. They'd fought and won, again and again. The day he and Sam got to mark their first kaiju kill on Aura Blue's armour was one of the proudest of his life.

And then, so slowly they'd barely been able to see it happening at the time, the tide started to turn. Pilots started getting sick, poisoned from the inside out by the ride-or-die seat of the pants technology they'd cobbled the first generation of jaegers together out of; Goody had spent nearly a year benched after medical consigned Sam to the command centre, waiting on a new copilot. Jaegers started not coming back. Support was withdrawn in favour of the Wall project, and slowly a grim resignation started to creep up on them.

Looking back on those early years, it's hard to believe how much everything has changed. Back then he never would have believed for a second that he'd ever be afraid to step into the drift.

He'd be a liar if he said he'd never considered Billy as a copilot. They've known each other a long time now, grown close and comfortable in their friendship without the benefit of the drift to put them right on the same page. Billy's companionable silence has a way of steadying his worse moods, keeping him on the level when the weight of old guilt wants to send him spiralling...put like that, it's tempting to believe that it could work the same way in the drift. But he knows better than to oversimplify it that way. Everything is so much _rawer_ when the neural bridge is active, nerves flayed tender and close to the surface. 

For as long as it never happens, he can believe that maybe it would work. He can tell himself there's still a chance. He doesn't know what he'd do if he was forced to confront that attempt inevitably failing like all the others. No-one's ever been able to stabilise him, not since what happened; even stepping into the drive pod and feeling the link initiate is enough to tip him over into a blind panic when it triggers the visceral memory of feeling his copilot's pain and terror in those last screaming seconds before the connection was violently severed. He doesn't want to let Sam down, but god, he can't face the humiliation of another publicly failed handshake.

In the morning, he'll go and make his apologies. He can't do this. He should have admitted from the start that he can't do this.

While it does nothing to assuage his guilt, sleep at least comes a touch easier with that decision held firm in his mind. He dozes off sometime around dawn, the distant sounds of the shatterdome starting to wake echoing through the halls. 

If he dreams, he doesn't remember it.


	2. Physical Compatibility

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little early, but...fuck it, it's Friday here. 
> 
> Thank you to **decoy_ocelot** for a little constructive criticism that prompted me to rewrite slightly.

Goody finally drags himself back to the land of the living around lunchtime, sandy-eyed and bleary with a faint headache nagging at his temples. His fingers feel clumsy as he drags his clothes on; his reflection in the mirror, despite his best efforts at appearing passably human, looks thin and exhausted. He's not sure any more whether it's vanity or some vestigial scrap of pride that keeps him donning this facade every morning, shaving and washing his face and selecting clean clothes from his closet, but it feels like common courtesy to at least give the people around him some plausible deniability. He adjusts his collar, gives the wraith in the mirror a wry look, and turns to leave.

The mess hall is quiet when he arrives - apparently he's just missed the lunch rush - but he spots Billy tucked away at a table in the back corner when he turns with his tray in his hands. There's a cup of coffee by his elbow and an empty tray pushed off to one side, and while he appears wholly absorbed in the papers spread out in front of him, he glances up and gives a nod of greeting as Goody approaches the table. 

"Busy day?" Goody asks lightly, carefully selecting an unobstructed patch of table on which to set down his tray. The mess of papers might look chaotic to the untrained eye, but he knows Billy well enough to know that there will be an order to them. He wouldn't want to disturb anything.

Billy fastidiously adds another note to the bottom of a form filled to overflowing with his own small, neat handwriting before adding the sheet to one of various piles. "Sparring evals from the kwoon," he replies by way of explanation, taking a sip from his coffee as he reaches for the next form. Now that it's been pointed out to him, Goody finds that even upside down he does in fact recognise the thin greenish paper and commentary boxes of the compatibility evaluation reports. A glance down the one in Billy's hand reveals a lot of ticks on the "unfavourable" end of the assessment scale.

"Any promising looking match-ups?" He knows it's a stupid question even as he asks it. Billy snorts.

"I wouldn't trust most of them to pilot a tandem bicycle together," he replies flatly, characteristically blunt enough to startle a laugh out of Goody. There's a trace of frustration in his sigh as he scrubs a hand over his face. "I hope the drop sims are going better."

Goody shrugs. "They wouldn't have made it this far in the training program if they couldn't acquit themselves well in a drop. But solo drops are only so useful."

He watches Billy write _not recommended_ at the bottom of another eval sheet, and feels something twist unpleasantly in the pit of his stomach. "Are there really no prospects at all?" he asks, devoutly hoping that he doesn't sound as desperate as he feels.

Billy sighs. "Faraday and Vasquez, maybe, if they can stop baiting each other for five minutes." He glances down at the papers again. "There are a few people we could try Emma Cullen with, but...not now. Not so soon after what happened."

"Who do you think has the best chance?"

There's a long pause, in which Billy carefully sets his pen aside and rests his elbows on the table, leaning forward and deliberately holding Goody's eyes. That calm, unwavering gaze pins him in place like a butterfly under a display case, and much as he wants to, he finds himself helpless to look away.

"You know who I think," Billy says quietly.

Goody lowers his eyes, halfheartedly nudging his lunch around the mess tray as he reminds himself that he's already made up his mind. There's no point in subjecting himself to another trip down the rabbit hole, feeling those wounds seared into his skin afresh, not when he already knows that failure is the only option. He doesn't need to prove to himself or anyone else that he's far past the point of ever being of use to anyone in the conn pod again. If they're to be left in the same position of being without a viable pilot pair whether he agrees to try the handshake or not, it does no harm to spare himself.

"I said I'd think about it," he says, a little more shortly than he'd intended. 

Billy shrugs. "You asked."

The thing is, it's not a matter of compatibility. He doesn't doubt for a second that he is drift compatible with Billy. Ten, fifteen years ago, had things gone a little differently, they could very easily have been an unparalleled copilot pair. But by now he's resigned to the fact that he's no longer capable of forming a stable connection. Just the familiar lights of the conn pod, the whirring sound of the sensor relays locking into place, is enough to have his pulse racing and his breath coming fast and shaky. He doesn't want to speculate how badly things would spiral if he ever even made it as far as facing a kaiju.

After lunch, he goes to see Sam again.

He leaves the mess with the full intention of politely but firmly declining. But by the time he reaches the elevator, doubts are gnawing at him again. He's intimately acquainted with the capricious malice of his own guilt by now, and for all that he can think of almost nothing he wants less than to go through another failed handshake...he can't shake the image of the so very nearly repaired jaeger standing in the bay. He can't shake the image of her sitting idle and empty until necessity forces an ill-prepared copilot team riding a thin, tenuous neural link into her conn pod. He already knows that he'll watch that jaeger fall under the dark waters of the Pacific one last time and wonder _what if_.

He gives the door of Sam's office a cursory knock before entering. Sam glances up from his paperwork and, after considering him in silence for a long moment, sets his pen aside and stands.

"Drink?" he inquires evenly.

"I do strive for consistency," Goody replies easily.

Sam shakes his head, a smile curling on his lips as he unstoppers the decanter and pours out two conservative measures. "I think 'predictability' was the word you wanted there."

Goody takes the offered glass and closes his eyes as he inhales, savouring the scent of a really very fine scotch. Sam, bless him, always has an excellent selection in stock; certainly of a higher quality that whatever tends to be filling Goody's flask at any given time. There's little point in going to any great extravagance when it's liable to be gulped down hastily without much time taken to taste it much less savour it. The contents of the flask are purely medicinal. The burn of it steadies his nerves when he needs it most; the warmth of Sam's scotch isn't quite the same, but it does the job well enough.

"It's not going to work," he says softly, looking up from his drink to regard Sam with weary eyes.

Sam settles back into his chair, fingers curled loosely around his own glass. "I wouldn't have asked you if I didn't think there was a chance."

“We both know how rare it is for someone to find another copilot after losing one.”

“You already did it once,” Sam points out. His eyes are intent, at odds with his relaxed posture. They’re old, old friends, but Sam has an entire shatterdome to worry about. Goody doesn’t begrudge him the need to make the most of whatever resources he has. 

Goody looks away. “That was different,” he says. “Even if it was difficult after you were benched, at least it left everything in working order. There was still something left to make a connection with. But losing a copilot in combat…” He shakes his head. 

He doesn’t remember the moment his connection with Sam faded for the last time. Logically, he knows it must have happened like every other time; the conn pod powering down, the momentary disorientation of coming back to nothing but his own blood and bone still feeling two thousand tonnes of metal like a phantom limb. He knows they must have slowly slipped out of sync as the echoes of the drift faded. But it was mundane, routine. They didn’t know it was the last time until days later, when the report on Sam’s post-drop physical made it to the Marshal’s desk. He doesn’t remember those last moments. Not really.

He’d give anything to be able to say the same about the last moments of his connection with the copilot he found after Sam. He remembers everything about it in visceral, nightmarish detail. He remembers blood and terror and _pain_ , so immediate and real that he hadn’t even known which of them was hit until suddenly he was left with nothing but screaming silence, and his mind flayed raw in every place they’d been connected.

There's a wan, exhausted kind of mirth in the smile Goody gives as he taps a finger against his temple. "The neighbourhood's gone to the dogs a little since you last came to visit. Even if the handshake works, that doesn't mean it'll be stable enough for combat."

The silence draws out as Sam considers him, those dark eyes looking right through him. Drift or no drift, Sam has always had a knack for knowing him entirely too damn well; better than he knows himself some days. It was true when they were bright young rising stars of the jaeger program some twenty years ago, and it's no less true now. There's a well-worn ease to the way things flow between them. They know each other far too well by now for there to be much point in being anything but honest with each other.

"Did you come to be talked into this or talked out of it?" Sam asks eventually.

"I don't know," Goody admits.

Sam tilts his head, tapping his fingers against the rim of his glass. "...when's the last time you went a few rounds in the kwoon?"

The look Goody shoots him is startled, a trace of puzzlement in his eyes. "It's been a while," he replies, brow creasing as he searches Sam's face for some indication of what that has to do with anything.

Sam nods and takes a sip of his drink. "Go spend some time in the kwoon," he says, and for all that it's phrased like a suggestion there's a certain implacability there. "Maybe you find someone worth giving a shot and maybe you don't. Either way, it'll straighten your head out some."

"A little birdie tells me the evals don't look promising," Goody comments, taking a long drink from his glass.

"Maybe you can change that." Sam drains what's left in his glass and sets it aside. "Now go on, get. Some of us have work to do."

 

In the end it doesn't actually take a great deal of digging through his locker to find his workout gear. He might have been letting the kwoon sessions slide for a while, but he's still been hitting the gym regularly; after all these years, keeping in shape is ingrained into pure habit. Time hasn't been kind to any of them - apart from Billy, who Goody is entirely convinced sold his soul in exchange for eternal youth at some point - but he'd like to think he isn't irretrievably over the hill quite yet.

He avoids the kwoon at first in favour of heading to the gym, telling himself that he's not procrastinating so much as warming up. It certainly has nothing at all to do with hoping to miss the tail end of the afternoon training session and slip in when most people are heading off to hit the showers before dinner. He'll go, but he doesn't have to invite any more of an audience than absolutely necessary. And there's a calmness in the rhythm of reps and sets, the burn of muscles and the steady thud of a pounding heart, that he sorely needs right now.

He's breathless and sweat-sheened by the time he finally admits to himself that he's put it off for as long as he can. Much as he'd be happy to continue procrastinating, if he spends much longer in the gym he'll be too tired and heavy-limbed to be of any use at all in the kwoon. If he's to force himself back to sparring one way or the other, he'd rather not embarrass himself any more severely than absolutely necessary. The least he can do is make a token effort to acquit himself well. He has something of a reputation to live up to after all.

There are more stragglers left in the kwoon than he'd expected, sweaty and tired-looking but with an air of determination about them as they dance around the sparring mat, testing how they move together. Perhaps he should have known better. It fairly concentrates the mind for a young ranger cadet, knowing there's an empty cockpit up for grabs if you can only find someone to share it with. Even all these years on he remembers well the longing and frustration, the desperate deals you make with yourself. _I'll train harder; I'll be calmer, easier, more compatible_. It's strange how quickly the image of success can reverse itself. Not so very long ago they'd held it up as a cultural ideal to succeed alone without support, to be a self-made man or woman. Perhaps the drift had changed all that, but he had a suspicion that it had simply made inescapable something they'd always tried to deny; that no-one ever truly succeeds alone.

Alone, they were ants beneath the boot of a careless giant. Together - not just a copilot team, but every trainer and mechanic and member of support staff who stood behind them - they can fight. They can _win_. They don't take as much time as really they should to step back and be awed by just how incredible that truly is.

The racks against the wall are half full of staffs worn and scuffed from hard use. The moment his fingers close around one, years fall away. The weight of the staff is familiar in his hands, turning it over slow and deliberate as he finds his balance, the way of it long ingrained into instinct by countless hours of training. There's something almost soothing in it, stealing the edge of prickling urgency from the unease simmering under his skin. He takes a steadying breath and steps out onto the mat.

There are eyes on him as he runs through old forms on muscle memory; he ignores them as best he can, focusing on the rhythm of his breathing and the weight of the staff in his hands, the coolness of the mat under his bare feet. It's strange, the way the body remembers, slow and uncertain at first but slowly growing in confidence. He couldn't have listed each step and turn and strike if his life depended on it, the brain tripping over something it had no hand in memorising, but as he goes through the motions, he finds himself shifting easily into the next form before it ever occurs to him to wonder what it might be. The pattern flows like some half-forgotten song from childhood, faded but intact, flooding back with startling vividness the moment it's prompted.

He turns into the last form, quick and fluid, satisfaction flushing warmly through him almost despite himself as he holds it for a long moment before straightening. 

It's been long enough that he's half forgotten the etiquette of the kwoon. When a cadet whose name he should remember but doesn't approaches him and bows, sheer reflex has him bowing back before his brain catches up enough for him to realise what's happening. If he hasn't set foot in the kwoon in a long time, it's been longer still since he last sparred with anyone. Something uneasy curls sickly in the pit of his stomach as he shifts back into a combat stance, grip too tight around his staff.

He's not as fast as he once was. Nor does he have the boundless energy of youth. But time and experience bring their own advantages, patience and judgement and the kind of base cunning that can only be imparted by decades of seeing every trick in the book. His sparring partner is over-eager, as most young cadets are, overextending himself; too keen to get his hits in to pay due mind to the ways in which he's leaving himself exposed. Goody steps out of the path of jabs and swats swings aside, and chooses his moment to strike low and sweep his opponent's feet out from under him.

He goes through the motions with a few different partners, winning some bouts and losing others. There's a satisfaction to this too that he'd almost forgotten, breathing hard with the red welts of nascent bruises painted across his shins and forearms, pushing his body to respond sharper, faster, more precise. But it's not what he came to the kwoon half afraid to find. He's in the rare position of having found a drift compatible partner not once but twice, and no matter how much time passes, he'll never forget the thrill of the moment it all flows together, dancing around the sparring mat in perfect sync. There's nothing else quite like it.

Evening draws on and the kwoon begins to empty as people filter out to eat and shower before seeking their bunks for the night. Eventually he's left standing in the middle of the sparring mat alone, and he doesn't know if the empty feeling caught in his chest is disappointment or relief.

He glances up at the sound of footsteps, tensing a fraction, only to relax again when he sees Billy emerging from the little office adjoining the kwoon. He gives Goody a nod of acknowledgement as he circles the room, giving the racks of staffs a cursory once-over.

"Well that was a waste of time," Goody says wearily, looking down at the staff in his hand.

Billy raises an eyebrow at him. "Was it?"

"I _do_ have some lovely new bruises," Goody replies sardonically. "Other than that..."

Billy gives him a long, considering look; lord but the man has disconcerting eyes, sharp and alert and entirely too knowing, his face not giving away the slightest hint of what he's thinking. Some scrap of tired stubbornness has Goody lifting his chin and holding Billy's gaze. After an endless moment, Billy snorts softly and leans down to unlace his boots.

"...really," Goody asks flatly as he watches Billy lift a staff from one of the racks and step barefoot onto the mat. Billy quirks an eyebrow at him, all faux innocence, the staff deceptively loose in his hands. Goody knows better than to be taken in. He's watched too many cocky young recruits get their asses summarily handed to them to think for a second that Billy's apparently relaxed stance means that he's anything other then poised to strike.

They circle each other around the mat, tracking each other's movements; Goody holds the staff by his side, newly conscious of what he's giving away in his movements and the way he carries himself. He's under no illusions about being remotely capable of beating Billy in anything like a fair fight. Against raw recruits he at least has the advantage of experience, but Billy has him beat twice over on that front, and he moves like a striking snake to boot. He knows he'll be doing well if he can get a few hits in before he lands flat out on his back.

"If I apologise for calling your kwoon a waste of time, will you at least leave me able to walk?" he inquires lightly.

Billy flashes him a grin that Goody feels safe interpreting as _probably not_ , and swoops in for a quick, testing strike low on the left. Goody catches the blow on his own staff and sweeps it aside, knowing it for the probing feint he is. From anyone else he might have thought it a genuine attempt on what most assume is the weak side, but Billy knows perfectly well that he's left-handed; he recognises a distraction to lull him into leaving his right insufficiently defended when he sees it. He retorts with a quick jab of his own, barely evades the answering swipe, and they trade a handful of rattling blows before Billy ducks and spins and hooks the staff in under his heel. There's a weightless moment before the bone-shaking thump as the mat swings up to meet him.

"You're a little rusty," Billy says. He's barely out of breath, the bastard, a glint in his eyes as he pointedly taps the end of his staff against Goody's sternum.

Goody snorts, making no move to attempt to get up. "At my best you could have kicked me up and down the kwoon," he replies dryly.

"With that attitude, yeah," Billy retorts, stepping back and swatting at his knee just hard enough to sting. Goody rolls back to his feet, half crouched just outside of striking range as he finds his balance again.

They trade quick, testing swipes, the clatter of the staffs loud in the quiet of the deserted kwoon. He _knows_ Billy's toying with him, but he can't find it in himself to be annoyed about it when it brings an almost playful edge to the sparring, moving together simply for the sake of it rather than really seeking to win. If nothing else it's a welcome distraction from the strange edge of almost-disappointment he'd been left with, easing the sick emptiness sitting heavily in his chest. It's simpler, here like this, no room left for anything else when all of his attention is needed just to anticipate where the next strike is coming from.

The temptation is to watch the staff. But that's a rookie mistake, and after all these years, if nothing else at least he knows better than to let himself fall victim to it. The staff is deceptively mobile, easy to feint with; a teasing jab catches the eye and distracts from the shift of weight which hints at the real strike. He might not have the advantage of experience here, but he has the advantage of knowing _Billy_. He's never known anyone else who delights in doing things the hard way quite like Billy does, who takes so much satisfaction proving to himself that he _can_. He likes to push himself. 

It's not something that Goody, scraping by on what good will the man he used to be earned, is in a position to understand. If he knew how to do anything the easy way, he would. But he recognises the edges of it in the way Billy lets chances for cheap shots pass him by, more interested in earning the victory than in having it. In a darker mood he might resent it; hell, from anyone else he knows he would. He'd resent an opponent willfully holding back because they both know just beating him isn't challenge enough. He'd resent knowing that he'd been this thoroughly outclassed.

And yet...somehow it's different when it's Billy. Maybe it's because they're friends. Maybe it's a matter of trust. Or maybe it's because he's seen what it looks like when Billy chooses to make a point out of spite, to humiliate someone by comprehensively beating them on their own terms; he knows that isn't what this is. It isn't a fight. It's barely even sparring in any conventional sense; it's movement for the sake of it, for the satisfaction of anticipating each other, neither of them overly concerned with scoring points. As they find their rhythm it all flows together into something more like a two-person kata, following an unwritten set of steps neither of them have ever learned as they dance across the mat in perfect sync. 

Goody freezes, struck like a bolt from the blue by icy realisation, and is immediately sent sprawling by a blow he should easily have seen coming.

He rolls over onto his back with a groan and stares unseeing up at the ceiling, something like panic fluttering frantically in the hollow of his throat. It's different from what he's felt before, but much as he might want to there's no denying what this is. There's no denying that it's exactly what he stepped into the kwoon half afraid to find.

"This is a conspiracy," he announces to no-one in particular. Billy, leaning over him with a hand half-extended, rolls his eyes.

Goody grudgingly accepts the offered hand to help him to his feet, suddenly weary right down to his bones as the fading adrenaline leaves him feeling sick and cold in its wake. It feels increasingly futile to keep running when at every turn he seems to come up against someone determined to believe in him despite all evidence to the contrary. If publicly proving once and for all that he's no longer of any use to anyone is what it takes to make those closest to him accept it, then that, apparently, is simply how it has to be. He sighs and gives Billy a thin, mirthless shadow of a smile.

"You don't have to agree to it," Billy says into the silence, watching him carefully.

"I keep trying to convince myself of that," Goody replies. "For some reason it isn’t working as well as it used to."


	3. Just A Memory

It's late enough by the time he finally leaves the kwoon that he doesn't expect to find Sam in his office; he hesitates before going looking for him at all. But the prospect of another night stewing is unbearable. He doesn't trust himself not to have lost his nerve by morning if he doesn't commit to this now.

The shatterdome is quiet as he makes his way through. The overhead lights, motion-activated, flare one by one as he passes and settle into a steadily glowing trail behind him. It does nothing to quiet the sick unease simmering under his skin, feeling painfully exposed as his footsteps echo loudly in the silence of the bare corridors. He doesn't know what he's going to say. He can't shake the conviction that there's no choice he can make here which won't turn out to have been a horrible mistake.

He hesitates in front of Sam's door. Raises his hand; lowers it again. 

He takes a deep breath, swears, and knocks.

There are a few endless moments of silence before the sounds of movement emerge faintly from the other side of the door, a few muffled thumps and the quiet shuffle of footsteps. Goody hears the hollow clunk of the lock sliding back, but somehow it still startles him when the door swings open, his heart in his throat as he takes a step back and meets Sam's tired eyes.

"I'll do it," he says in a rush before Sam can ask why he's here. Sam regards him solemnly for a long moment before nodding. 

"Good."

"...I have some conditions," Goody clarifies in a more measured tone, something sick and shocked crawling feverishly over the back of his neck as the magnitude of what he's just agreed to tries to sink in. He pushes it away.

Sam sighs, and glances up and down the corridor before stepping aside. "Why don't you come in."

The Marshall's quarters are larger than most others in the shatterdome, designed with the thought in mind that the occupant would be entertaining visiting dignitaries and the like. Still, it would take an impressive stretch of the definition to call any of the living quarters homey, and Sam's have a certain barren neatness about them that speaks of a man who doesn't own enough to clutter them, or spend enough time there to generate other mess. It's very clearly a space where someone comes to sleep, not to live; there's a distinct lack of personal touches. Save one.

Tacked to the back of the door is a single photo, unframed and a touch singed along one side, depicting a laughing family. Goody looks at it for a long moment before lowering his eyes out of some vestigial sense of respect. They all have their ghosts.

He sits on one of the spartan sofas, his gaze catching on the neat stacks of files spread out over the coffee table. Some he can identify; repair and maintenance records, duty reports, cadet evaluations. Others he doesn't recognise at all. It's truly startling, the amount of paperwork an organisation like the PPDC can generate in a day. "Has no-one ever told you it's unhealthy to bring your work home with you?" he asks lightly. Sam snorts.

"You mentioned conditions," he says, sitting down opposite Goody and reaching for a gently steaming mug.

"Privacy," Goody replies without hesitation. "And for it to be kept quiet. I'd rather not have an audience for this. And what a failed handshake would do to morale is the last thing the shatterdome needs right now."

"We can arrange that," Sam says, giving a nod, and Goody hadn't even realised he was anticipating a fight until suddenly the tension is flowing out of him at the easy agreement. He sighs and sinks a little deeper into the sofa, scrubbing a weary hand over his face. Some part of him had half been hoping for an argument, for a refusal, but...here they are. For better or for worse, this is happening.

"For the record," he says, "I'm still not convinced this is going to work."

Sam considers him for a long moment. "So why agree?"

"Because..." Goody shakes his head, swallowing the sudden bitter taste at the back of his throat, some choking tightness wrapping around his chest. "Because in six months or a year, some green pilot pair riding a shaky drift are going to die in that damn jaeger." He can see it clear as day from inside and out. The alarms screaming in the red-lit cockpit, the searing shock of the connection being violently severed; the roar of chaos over the radio back in the LOCCENT before everything goes abruptly, horribly silent. "I don't need another _what if_ to carry around."

"I know the feeling," Sam says quietly.

Goody gives him a thin, exhausted ghost of a grin. "Remember when we were young and bold and going to live forever?"

Sam snorts and shakes his head. "No."

 

Perhaps unsurprisingly he doesn't sleep well that night. He can feel the enormity of the decision he's just committed to hanging over him, a frozen tidal wave poised to come crashing down if he dares acknowledge it. He dozes restlessly and wakes often to the lingering claws of formless nightmares, a cold sweat on his skin and his heart beating too fast in his chest, fighting his way free of tangled sheets in a panic. The darkness of his quarters is heavy and close.

He finally gives up on sleep entirely sometime before dawn. A few of the night shift are haunting corners of the mess hall; he keeps his head down so as to not inadvertently provoke a conversation through eye contact as he pours himself a coffee and walks out again with tin mug in hand. On autopilot his feet carry him to the gantry behind the loading docks. The ocean is invisible somewhere in the inky blackness below, the steady crash of breaking waves drifting up out of the darkness. The wind plucks at his coat and snatches away the smoke from his cigarette as he exhales, watching clouds scud by above in the pale moonlight.

Slowly the sky starts to lighten, dawn breaking somewhere behind the clouds. Goody flicks away the spent end of his cigarette, sighs, and heads back inside.

He considers breakfast for token moment, but even the thought of food has the knots in his stomach tightening nauseously; he drops his empty mug off in the slowly-filling mess hall and instead traces the familiar path up to the kwoon. A few diligent souls are already warming up beside the sparring mat. Goody does his best to ignore them as he skirts the opposite edge of the kwoon and makes his way to the door of the attached office.

Billy is sitting at his desk, an empty mess hall tray by his elbow and a mess of papers spread out in front of him. A hint of surprise flickers across his expression as Goody enters. 

"Twice in as many days?" He raises his eyebrows. "Did you make some kind of late new year's resolution?"

Goody chooses not to dignify that with a response. He takes a moment to close the door behind him before taking a deep breath and saying with no preamble, "I agreed to it."

There's a drawn out moment of silence.

"...you talked to Chisolm already?" Billy asks, carefully noncommittal. His expression is unreadable.

"Yes." Goody pauses, his gaze dropping a little as he considers his next words. “....I’ve asked for it to be kept quiet.”

There’s the soft rush of a sigh from the other side of the table, followed by the creak of a chair; Goody glances up to see Billy standing. He circles around and twitches the blinds aside to look out into the kwoon.

“You still don’t think this is going to work,” he says.

Goody gives a small shrug. “I’d rather be prepared if it doesn’t.”

“And if it does?”

Something icy crawls down Goody’s spine. It seems a touch ridiculous, now he suddenly has cause to admit it aloud, but he honestly hadn’t given any thought to what would come next if they were successful. He hadn’t seriously entertained the possibility that they might be.

If somehow, against all reason and experience this works, if they make it through the joint drop sims and every other test and barrier between them and that conn pod...he’ll be a pilot again. He’ll be back out there facing the kaiju. Just the thought is enough to have the sick stirrings of panic clawing their way up his throat.

A firm hand lands on his shoulder and he starts, blinking wide-eyed at Billy, who’s suddenly beside him. His expression is calm, but there’s a spark of something in his eyes that Goody doesn’t know how to read; something implacable and determined, something fierce enough to be alien after so long without allowing himself the luxury of hope.

“Goody,” he says, steady and certain in a way that brooks no disagreement. “We’ll figure it out.”

Goody takes a deep, steadying breath and gives a shaky nod. Billy’s right. What happens will happen, and while he may lack Billy’s confidence that they’ll be equal to whichever challenge comes of it, he can’t let himself get tangled up in anticipating it when it’s going to take everything he has just to get through what’s coming next.

The next few days are nothing but the gnawing unease of anticipation, part of him desperate to have this over and done with, another hopelessly wishing he could put it off indefinitely. It’ll be a relief for it to be over, even if he already knows that relief will be tainted with an old, familiar kind of shame. But to get it over with, he has to get through it, and some nagging voice at the back of his mind is constantly whispering that maybe he can’t. He doesn’t know if he has another handshake left in him. He’s so, so tired of wondering every time if this trip down the rabbit hole will be the one that finally breaks him.

More than anything else in those achingly empty days, he finds himself seeking out Billy’s company. Perhaps it’s a good sign that the undemanding quiet of Billy’s presence steadies him in a way that not much that doesn’t come in a bottle can these days. But some darker, more pessimistic part of him can’t help but wonder if this is nothing but him savouring the last days of this friendship while he can, before the handshake ruins it.

He feels a pang of guilt for it, occasionally. It seems disloyal even to entertain the thought that Billy wouldn’t be better than that. But he can’t bring himself to believe that anyone could be exposed to the wreckage of his subconscious, and not want to do the smart thing and distance themselves. Lord knows _he_ would if he could.

The few days they spend waiting seem to last an eternity. But when word finally comes that LOCCENT are ready for them, the only thought in Goody’s head is that an eternity wouldn’t be long enough to let him be ready for this.

The solid warmth of Billy’s shoulder against his is a comfort he desperately needs as they walk into the drivesuit room side by side to be met by a skeleton crew of technicians. He hasn’t set foot in this part of the shatterdome since that last disastrous failed handshake; just the familiar smell of relay gel and oiled metal is enough to have his heart beating faster, a slight tremor shaking through his hands.

Generally it’s a more relaxed process, preparing for a handshake. In a combat drop there would be alarms blaring, the countdown displayed on every screen, running out the seven minutes they have after an event to get into the cockpit and be ready to launch. There’s none of that time pressure here. No rush, although the technicians pride themselves on their speed and efficiency even when it isn’t a matter of life and death. And yet he knows he’s never been this nervous before a combat drop, sick with the anticipation of what’s waiting for him in the conn pod.

He closes his eyes and tunes out the low murmurs of the technicians, clinging to a fragile sense of calm numbness as he lets himself be turned and posed and strapped into the drivesuit. At least there won’t be an audience. Sam has been true to his word about keeping it quiet, hand-picking staff he trusts to run LOCCENT and the drivesuit room, and choosing a time toward the end of the nightshift when the few people still awake will be tired and incurious. However badly this goes, at least he won’t have to deal with stares and whispers following him around the shatterdome for the next week.

The technician at his shoulder gives his backplate one last solid thump and steps away. He sighs, gathers what little courage he has left, and walks forward.

If he thought the drivesuit room was sickeningly familiar, it’s nothing beside the conn pod, the lights of the control panels and the waiting cradle of the command platform. For an endless moment he finds himself frozen in the doorway. He’s never set foot inside Widow Rose before - she was built long after his last drop, and quickly filled by a copilot pair of her own - but knowing that doesn’t help. It’s still horribly, achingly familiar.

Billy nudges his shoulder gently, startling him out of his reverie. He swallows down the pathetic part of him that wants so desperately to find some way, _any_ way of delaying this even if only for a second, and gives a shaky nod. This is happening one way or another. The least he can do is face it with what little dignity he has left.

“Breathe,” Billy says, low and even. “You’ll get through it.”

“Said the butcher to the cow,” Goody mutters. 

Billy huffs a laugh. “I’ll make it quick and painless.”

Despite himself, he can’t help but be lulled a little by Billy’s easy calm, even as he feels a pitiful stab of envy for it. He gives a thin, tired ghost of a smile and nudges Billy’s shoulder lightly in return. If he always would have had to find himself here again, he’s glad at least that it’s Billy here with him. He doesn’t know that he could have faced it with anyone other than Billy by his side.

 _Harness set for test mode_ is flashing on the screens as they strap themselves in. Goody’s hands are shaking badly enough to have him fumbling the controllers as he threads his fingers through them, sick unease prickling feverishly over the back of his neck and cold sweat crawling down his skin under the drivesuit. He can feel his heart pounding in his chest, his breath coming fast and shallow; lord only knows what his vitals readout in LOCCENT must look like.

“ _Pilots on board and ready to connect_ ,” Teddy’s voice filters in tinnily over the comms. Goody sucks in a sharp breath.

“Steady,” Billy murmurs.

“ _Initiating neural handshake_.”

For an endless moment there’s nothing but the visceral rush of sense memory, too quick and tangled to make any sense of, the sudden feeling of everyone opening and unfolding, of the mind flowing out into the space suddenly opened to it. He hears his mother’s voice, sees a fleeting glimpse of her face from a child’s low perspective. Somewhere behind it is another woman’s voice, words in a language he doesn’t speak but somehow understands. A sharp stab of unease; a man’s voice this time, abrupt and angry. Helpless frustration. Silence.

There’s a mirror in front of him and bruises on his face and the taste of blood in his mouth, and pain comes tearing up his flank, alarms blaring in the desperate red pulse of the conn pod emergency lighting, and in the last screaming moments he feels something snap with a brutal whiplash leaving behind nothing, nothing, nothing—

Except that there isn’t nothing. Under it all there’s something solid, an unexpected rock to cling to and keep his head above water while he gasps for air. Just the shock of it, of being caught when he expected to fall, is enough to snap him out of the inward spiral for a precious, fleeting moment. It’s so very little, an eye in the storm of crushing panic. But it’s enough for something warm and steady to wrap in around him, and push back the howling dark.

It's not the panicked clawing he remembers, the fingers of a doomed attempt to reel him in frantically scrabbling to find purchase on his spiralling subconscious. Instead it's a mere brush of a touch, nudging him back toward an even keel so gently he might not have noticed it if he hadn't been waiting for it.

“Billy?” he mumbles uncertainly, his voice cracking. He’s here in the conn pod, but no, the alarms are silent. The lights are a calm, steady blue. The only pain is sense memory.

“Breathe,” Billy says again, just as calm and steady as the lights. “I’ve got you.”

He takes a deep, shuddering breath and slowly exhales. The rabbit hole is right there, aching emptily like a missing tooth, but no sooner do his thoughts drift toward it than they’re steered in another direction; a flashing school of fish easily startled into darting off by a dark shape slowly cruising by below.

With every step he expects to fall. But the connection stays steady, grounding him in the here and now. The jaeger is alive under his hands, and now he’s not so tangled in the cobwebs of painful memory...she feels different from Aura Blue. Lighter. And Billy is right there with him every inch of the way as he slowly settles back into the old familiar feeling of a jaeger’s heart beating with his, filling the drift with the undemanding quiet he’s always associated with Billy’s presence.

Tentatively he reaches out, testing the shape of their connection. There’s satisfaction radiating from Billy, pride tinged with relief, and— there, sitting at the centre of it all so deceptively unassuming that he scarcely recognises it for what it is, the cold certainty of what this means for them.

His own fears are skittering things, slipping away when his thoughts land on them in daylight; leaving only trails of lingering unease behind until they creep back up on him in the silence of his bunk at night. He half expects this one to do the same, but it doesn’t. 

_You’re afraid too_ he thinks, the realisation distant and dazed. He can’t see Billy’s smile, but he feels it. Grim amusement. Fatalism. Acceptance.

The readouts on the screens are all in the green, the conn pod humming around them. “ _Full alignment_ ,” Teddy’s voice comes again over the comms, static crackling on the line. “ _Handshake holding steady_.”

“ _Congratulations_ ,” Sam adds. To anyone else he might sound perfectly professional, but Goody knows him well enough to know what ‘self-satisfied’ sounds like on him. He’s sure that the fond exasperation that suffuses the link is wholly his, but the answering flicker of amusement is definitely Billy’s.

The process of disconnecting and powering down passes in something of a daze. It’s been so long since the last time a handshake ended in anything other than a spiral and an emergency shutdown for him that distance has made the standard procedure unfamiliar. It’s calm, matter of fact; clearly routine for everyone present but him. He barely has the presence of mind to follow what’s happening.

Fortunately, little is required of him other than moving when he’s told. In some kind of stunned trance he allows himself to be led from the conn pod and methodically peeled out of the drivesuit, the murmurs of the technicians and the voices from LOCCENT filtering over the radio so much white noise in his ears. Everything seems distant and hazy and unreal.

Everything apart from Billy.

It’s momentarily disorienting to turn and see Billy facing him when instinct insists that they should be moving as one. Billy tilts his head, considering; Goody notices himself mirroring the motion half a heartbeat after he does it, the two of them still half in sync as they ride out the echoes of the drift. His heart is still racing, hardly able to believe that they really _did_ it. He hadn't believed it could ever flow that smooth and easy again. After all this time he'd forgotten what it could be like to slip into a solid, comfortable connection.

They're close, he realises belatedly; enough so to look odd to outside eyes. So soon after the handshake his instincts don't even question that of course Billy belongs in his personal space as much as he does himself. A day ago he might have felt exposed under that searching gaze. Now it's nothing but familiar.

"You could have said something," Billy says after a long pause.

There's no point in pretending not to know exactly what he's talking about. A flush creeps up Goody's cheeks, but he doesn't lower his eyes. "It never seemed like a good time," he replies with a small shrug.

It’s strange to think how recently the idea of having every fleeting want and idle fantasy laid bare would have been mortifying. Here and now, still half in the drift, the idea that Billy knows seems as natural and unremarkable as admitting it to himself in the privacy of his own thoughts. There’s no unease, no knee-jerk revulsion. There’s nothing but slightly startled curiosity, and a trace of what might be cautious interest.

One of the technicians clears her throat, breaking their shared reverie, unfazed as only a long-term drivesuit tech can be when their attention snaps to her in perfect unison. She informs them that the Marshal is expecting them for a debrief, and politely ejects them from the drivesuit room to make the walk to LOCCENT.

“I knew you had another one in you,” is the first thing Sam says, smiling broadly. 

Goody huffs a laugh and lets himself be pulled into a hug. “We’ll see,” he replies, noncommittal. “One successful handshake doesn’t mean a combat-ready link.”

Sam shrugs. “We’ll schedule a joint drop sim tomorrow. In the meantime—” He gives a wry grin. “—why don’t you give me five damn minutes to enjoy something going right for once.”

“Yes _sir_ ,” Goody replies with an entirely spurious dutiful air, throwing a mock salute. 

“Very funny,” Sam says, a hint of a smile curling the corner of his lips. “Go on, get out of here. Both of you. Sleep. You’ve earned it.”

The first hints of the shatterdome waking are starting to drift through the air around them as they make their way back down from LOCCENT; internal lights slowly brightening, footfalls and distant chatter in the air as the oncoming day shift begin the sleepy shuffle from quarters to showers to mess hall. No matter what else may be happening, the rhythm of shifts and rotations carries stubbornly on like the slow beat of some colossal heart.

They get a few glances and mumbled greetings in passing, but no-one seems to pay them much mind. After the last few days of aching uncertainty, it’s an indescribable relief to walk through the halls of the shatterdome with the weight of the handshake off of his mind, with the lingering echoes of Billy’s utter self-confidence bolstering him. It’s a relief to find himself not avoiding anyone’s eyes.

It doesn’t feel real yet. Part of him remains convinced that some other stumbling block up ahead will catch them out, that they’ll trip over a reason why it can’t work when they’re least expecting it. He doesn’t know if he’s afraid of it or hoping for it.

“You’re still not sure about this, are you,” Billy says aloud.

Goody gives a small shrug. “As I said to Sam, compatibility doesn’t necessarily mean a link stable enough for combat.” Keeping the drift steady in the calm, controlled environment of a test handshake is a very different thing to maintaining it under the stress and demanding neural load of combat.

“Tell me you don’t think I can hold it,” Billy says, flat and matter of fact. Goody sighs.

“No,” he says. “No, when you put it like that, I suppose I don’t doubt that you can.”


	4. We Are The Resistance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay! As I mentioned on my [tumblr](http://clairecreatesathing.tumblr.com), last week was a busy one at work and at home. Thanks to everyone who commented. Enjoy!

It always seems to be in a storm.

Rain is lashing down so intensely that it’s hard to tell where the sky ends and the sea begins, the wind howling emptily around the bulk of the jaeger as the water roils and heaves around their waist. Waves that would dwarf a person are ripples in a pond from this vantage point, the troughs and peaks of a storm-driven ocean that could snap a mighty ship in half of no concern to a jaeger.

In the darkness under the low, heavy stormclouds, there’s no way for unaided human eyes to see the leviathan shadow moving deep below the surface. But as the sonar pulses, there it is nonetheless, the signal rendered into a form comprehensible to eyes augmented by all the instrumentation of a jaeger. It’s vast, gathering speed as it rises, ready to breach with ravenous maw agape—

 _It’s just a sim_ , Goody reminds himself desperately.

The reminder is reaffirmed by a pulse of reassurance from the other side of the cockpit, and he holds as tight to it as he can, taking comfort in Billy’s steady calm. He knows from bitter experience that left to run free, old trauma would see his subconscious bolting like a panicked horse. But reined in by Billy’s impassive self-control, it becomes something manageable, _useful_ ; every sense on high alert, instincts tuned in to the slightest flicker of the sonar and ripple on the water.

Distantly he can feel the memories of old battles rushing through his mind, but it’s a far cry from the panicked blur they welter up in when in a moment of weakness he neglects to repress them. They come and go in a rush of detached curiosity as Billy hunts through them, purposeful and matter of fact, unhesitating in gleaning every advantage he can from Goody’s greater experience. Even in the drift, a drop sim is still a far cry from the real thing. They both know that. But the more repetition ingrains joint combat into reflex, the more exposure numbs them to the horror of the lovecraftian monstrosities they’ll be facing, the greater their chances of survival.

This is their third and final joint drop sim, the successful completion of which is the only thing left standing between them and official pilot status. Goody can still barely believe that they’ve made it this far, that at every step where he expected to fall he’s found nothing but solid ground under his feet. After so long it seems too good to be true.

The water heaves and splits, the unearthly roar of the kaiju ringing out over the howl of the storm as it surfaces and lunges.

The sim data draws on the readings from a hundred old battles, different classes of kaiju and marks of jaeger. On an ordinary drop sim the program might select any settings at random, but for their purposes it’s been set to mimic the jaeger that will be theirs - her size and weight and reach, what they expect of her reflexes and weaponry systems - as closely as possible. She’s small for a jaeger, light; built for speed and agility over brute strength. If she responds anything in reality like she does in the simulations, she’ll be a formidable ranged fighter.

Even knowing it’s only a sim, it’s a thrill to feel the jaeger moving with them, to feel every blow she takes shake through him right down to his bones. There’s something intoxicating in the feeling of _power_ behind every step, every swing; all the sensor data swirling like a sixth sense, like nothing the hindbrain of a barely-evolved monkey is remotely equipped to process. In the conn pod it’s easy to feel untouchable.

With one last unearthly, ear-splitting shriek, the kaiju crashes limply into the water and slips beneath the waves; a monstrous alien attack dog reduced to nothing be two thousand tonnes of calamari. And for one breathless moment, adrenaline singing in his veins as the sonar goes quiet, Goody almost lets himself believe that they can do this.

In the exuberant aftermath of the drop sim, he quietly makes his excuses and slips out.

He meets Billy’s gaze briefly from across the room as he goes; Billy raises an eyebrow at him, in response to which Goody can only shrug. He hadn’t really expected to make it to the door without Billy noting his absence, and while he does feel just a _little_ bad for leaving Billy to field the questions and congratulations alone...not quite enough to stay. He’s served his time. And one way or the other, this atmosphere is something Billy is going to have to get used to. 

For all the successful drop sims and handshakes Billy has under his belt, he’s never been a fully fledged pilot in his own right before, never experienced first-hand the circus that follows a jaeger pilot around. It had come as something as a shock to the system for Goody, back when he’d first been paired up with Sam. In his time in the military he’d grown used to the occasional _thank you for your service_ from a cashier or waitress, but there was still an anonymity to it. No-one was overly concerned with the details of who _he_ was; just with the uniform. It had been uniquely disconcerting to out of the blue become a household name. 

Nonetheless, Goody doesn’t doubt for a second that his copilot will handle it with aplomb. It’d take more than an overexcited audience to ruffle Billy.

The tumult of a dozen different overlapping conversations fades away behind him as Goody makes his way down the corridor. On some kind of autopilot his feet carry him up toward the gantries overlooking the main bays, along pipe-lined hallways and up echoing concrete stairwells. He gets a few brief glances and greetings from people in passing, but little more than that. Word must not have spread yet.

The air is cool out on the gantry, a dizzying drop visible below through the metal grating. On the other side of the cavernous vaulted room, the jaeger that will very soon officially be theirs stands in her bay all but finished, sparks flaring as technicians in full harness clamber nimbly over the scaffolding clinging to her limbs. She looks half skeletal with her armour removed, baring her inner workings for the mechanics to tweak and tune. The armour plating itself will be sitting neatly laid out in the body shop, cleaned and primed and surface treated, waiting on a name and a crest to be chosen before she’s painted.

He leans his elbows on the railing, the metal cold and hard through the fabric of his shirt as he folds his hands together and watches, savouring the odd peace in the purposeful clatter of metal and whine of power tools drifting distantly through the air for the way it blunts the edges of the mix of elation and terror buzzing under his skin. 

It’s still such a strange thought that very soon he’ll be feeling that titan moving as one with him, the spark of her circuits humming in his veins. It doesn’t feel real yet. Somehow, after the handshake and the drop sims and feeling someone else sharing his thoughts again for the first time in forever, it still doesn’t feel real. Maybe it won’t until that first emergency deployment, the klaxon call of warning sirens echoing around the drivesuit chamber as the seven minute countdown bleeds steadily away. Maybe it won’t feel real until he’s staring his first real battle in many long years in the face.

Shadows shift in the periphery of his vision, and the gantry creaks with another set of footsteps. He glances back over his shoulder, tensing for a moment before his eyes land on the familiar figure of their glorious leader. Maybe it’s his imagination, but he can’t help but think that Sam looks a little less weary than is usual these days.

“I didn’t think anyone would find me up here,” Goody comments.

Sam leans up against the railing beside him, folding his arms as he surveys the scene laid out below them. Even now, decades after the last time they stepped into the drift together, there’s still something steadying in having Sam’s presence solid and real beside him. But then he always has been the weak link, hasn’t he; always the one needing steadied. Everything going horribly wrong for them didn’t change that. It just made it inescapable.

“I won’t lie to you,” Sam replies, “I might have scared the pants off a few smokers before I thought to look here.”

Goody laughs, shaking his head. “It does nothing for your air of mystery when you admit things like that, oh captain my captain.”

Sam just snorts in response. “As if there any any mysteries left between us.”

The conversation lulls into silence as they both watch the work continue on the waiting jaeger. Distant shouts ring out, made incomprehensible by the echo of the huge room, as one of the cranes ponderously hoists some component into place at chest height. Beside the jaeger it looks tiny. Only the mechanics that swarm over it like ants betray the true scale of it.

“She’s beautiful,” Goody murmurs half to himself, admiration in his eyes at the sight of her slowly coming together.

“She is,” Sam replies. “And she’s yours now. Officially. The announcement went out just before I came up here.” Goody shoots him a sideways glance, not surprised exactly, but— a little caught off guard by it, perhaps. He hadn’t expected things to move quite so quickly. 

“...has she been named yet?” he asks.

“She has,” Sam confirms. He gives a hint of a grin. “She’s down on the LOCCENT roster as Viper Angel.”

Goody huffs something that isn’t quite a laugh and scrubs his hands over his face, not prepared for how much more real it all suddenly feels now that he has a name to match to the incredible machine slowly taking shape before him. “It has a ring to it,” he admits, giving Sam a weak smile.

“There’s going to be a party to celebrate,” Sam says with the slightly apologetic air of a man not anticipating a positive response.

“Must we?” Goody asks rhetorically, his tone resigned.

“You know how little there’s been to celebrate lately,” Sam says gently. “They need this.”

Goody sighs. “The PR always was the most tedious part of the job.”

“Look on the bright side,” Sam replies genially, clapping him on the shoulder. “Everyone there is going to want to buy you a drink.”

 

The sun is low in the sky as they step out of the shatterdome, casting long shadows across streets lit in the red and gold of dusk. It’s bright enough still that the streetlights haven’t come up yet, a low clamour of conversation and laughter drifting through the air from the knots of people clustered outside bars and restaurants. There’s music playing somewhere near by.

It’s only in moments like this that Goody realises just how rarely he leaves the shatterdome and ventures out into the city beyond. They live in their own little world in a lot of ways. In the spartan concrete confines of the shatterdome, so immersed in the ugly reality of this fight, it’s easy to forget what they’re fighting for. It’s easy to forget why it’s worth it. But seeing people smiling, going about ordinary lives unafraid...this is why they fight and die in red-lit conn pods. For the hope of a world where no-one else has to.

The bar is already busy when they walk in, full of PPDC personnel; most of whom have managed quite the head start on celebrating, if the drunken cheer that goes up is any indication. He’s already meeting Billy’s gaze before he has any conscious awareness of seeking it out, their eyes finding each other across the room as easily as looking to a mirror for your own reflection. The handful of times they’ve stepped into the drift together already feels like a lifetime.

He’s quickly pulled into a knot of people and a drink pressed into his hands, his grin a little glassy as he fields congratulations and praise with as much grace as he feels capable of. Somehow it was easier to bear the distorted echoes of his reputation when his glory days were something safely distant, viewed through rose-tinted memory by everyone but him. The legend he’s forgotten how to be is quite the pair of boots to fill.

Most of the evening passes in something of a blur. The glass in his hand never seems to be allowed to run empty, which is a blessing at least; with the glow of the alcohol curling warmly in his veins, it’s a little easier to settle back into his gregarious public persona and put on the appropriate show. A few drinks deeper into the night and he might even believe it himself.

Every face he recognises from the shatterdome seems to be there, and more that he doesn’t besides. Plenty of the congratulations are tinged with poorly-concealed envy, particularly those of waitlisted ranger cadets. Current and former pilots are a touch more knowing. _We the few, the proud, the doomed._

He smiles are bears it for as long as he can before he makes some vague excuse about going to the restroom and slips off.

The welter of noise from the bar spills out into the cool air of the street as he steps outside, before blessedly tapering off when the door swings shut again. Full night has fallen in the meantime, scattered raindrops pattering softly down onto the deserted sidewalk in the islands of light cast by the streetlamps. He breathes a soft sigh of relief and steps into the shelter of the awning.

His hands are steady as he sets his glass down on one of the rickety tables and pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket, just drunk enough for the damp chill in the air to seem distant and irrelevant, his fingers a touch clumsy as he fumbles for a cigarette. He closes his eyes against the flare of the lighter and inhales deeply, savouring the acrid burn of the smoke.

“Those things will kill you, you know,” Emma comments.

Goody taps the ash from the end of the cigarette and gives a small shrug. “Most things will, eventually,” he replies, casting her a sideways glance. Her eyes are on the mid distance, her fingers curled loosely around a half emptied bottle where she sits alone at one of the rain-flecked tables.

The smoke curls in the air as he exhales, drifting on the breeze and slowly dissipating. There’s something a touch melancholy in watching it fade away, leaving nothing behind but lingering scent and a memory soon to be forgotten.

“I didn’t expect to see you tonight,” Goody says.

Emma huffs something that isn’t a laugh, her gaze dropping to her drink. “Sitting alone outside a bar seemed just a little less pathetic than sitting alone in our— in _my_ quarters.”

“I’m impressed,” Goody says wryly, his smile a thin, self-deprecating thing. “It took me a great deal longer to come that far.”

The silence draws out for a long moment, broken only by the steady drum of the rain pattering onto the canvas of the awning. Emma takes a measured sip of her drink, her eyes still fixed unseeing on the horizon.

“Does it get easier?” she asks softly, something almost wistful in her voice.

For an endless moment, Goody considers lying. He considers dusting off one of the many platitudes he’d been offered in those first empty days after he’d woken in the infirmary with nothing but screaming silence where his copilot should have been. Part of him had known them for the lies they were even at the time, he thinks, but that hadn’t made it sting any less when they proved untrue. 

“No,” he replies. Emma sighs, and nods.

The rain is getting heavier, the steady beat of it drowning out the muffled sounds of the party filtering out from the bar. Goody finishes the cigarette in silence. He stubs it out against the worn brick of the wall before dropping the butt into the trash can, turns to head back inside, and...pauses.

“It doesn’t get easier,” he says quietly, his eyes on the ground. “But perhaps it’s easier to come back from if you’re stronger in the first place.”

Emma doesn’t respond. He nods to himself, takes a steadying breath, and opens the door.


	5. Better Than New

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, it's finally done. Thank you to everyone who took the time to comment, it was great motivation to keep going.

The first thing Goody’s aware of is an intense and overwhelming gratitude that at least the senior personnel quarters have attached private toilets.

Fortunately in the time it takes that groggy thought to form, his body has already carried him across the room on stumbling autopilot and dropped him on his knees in front of said toilet. His head swims as he retches weakly, clinging to the bowl, head fuzzy and pounding and stomach in a state of all-out rebellion.

He rests his cheek against the blessedly cool plastic of the seat and regards the pitiful former contents of his stomach glumly, what little brainpower he presently has at his disposal largely devoted to wondering foggily if it’s worth making the slow trek back to bed, or if he might be better served by staying right where he is. He doesn’t feel in immediate danger of retching again, but the headrush which is likely to ensue if he tries to stand may well change that.

After a prudent pause Goody, veteran of many a crippling hangover, manages to gather the necessary physical and mental resources to drag himself to what might loosely be described as a standing position. He grips the rim of the sink for support and leans down to drink straight from the tap. Even the faintly metallic taste of the shatterdome’s pipework is an improvement when his mouth tastes like something died in it: probably whatever remains of his dignity, though he doesn’t remember enough of the end of the night to vouch for that one way or the other. He swills, spits, and then drinks until he feels slightly less like he’s going to fall over if he tries to straighten up.

He reaches for the glass that usually sits on the counter, only to come up empty. It's then, peering at the absence of glass in bleary accusation, that it finally registers that these aren't his quarters.

Suddenly he feels a lot more sober than he had a second ago.

In his defence, it’s not a difficult mistake to make. Some of the quarters are mirrored depending on which way they face onto the corridor, but they’re all built to the same basic layout. And what personal touches the inhabitant might give their quarters are likely to be reserved for the bunk itself, rather than the bathroom. The standard-issue toiletries they pick up from stores are all the same. But now that he comes to look around, that’s very definitely a toothbrush that isn’t his sitting beside the sink, and a hairbrush he has no reason to own on the counter.

The door is standing ajar behind him, the dim sliver of room visible beyond yielding little further information. Try as he might to recall anything further, the end of the night remains hazy. He doesn’t remember leaving the bar. He’s not sure whether or not he should take it as a reassurance that he’s still mostly clothed.

Tempting as it presently is, he’s aware that hiding in the bathroom will only work as a solution for so long; possibly not for _very_ long, if whoever these quarters belong to is in a state anything like he is. He takes a few moments to compose himself as best he can, availing himself of his host’s mouthwash - under the circumstances he imagines they won’t begrudge him it - and splashing cool water over his face. And then he straightens, takes a moment to remind himself once more that hiding is not a feasible long-term solution, and opens the door.

The quarters beyond are much like any in the shatterdome, compact and spartan but comfortable enough, the bare concrete walls largely devoid of any personal touches. It’s also starkly devoid of another living soul.

He squints dubiously around, but the occupant fails to appear. For a moment he considers the thought that perhaps these are his quarters and he’s simply lacking the mental faculties to recognise them, but...no. There aren’t many personal touches to the room, but the few he can see certainly aren’t his. And the only items present he can identify as his own are the shoes by the door and the jacket draped over the back of the desk chair.

He should probably be making a tactical withdrawal while he has the chance. But the thought of taking a walk of shame through the halls of the shatterdome right now is not an appealing one. He makes his graceless way across the room to sag onto the bed and buries his face in the pillow with a groan of relief. Safely cocooned in bed - even if it isn’t _his_ bed - this feels almost survivable. And while hangovers are never pleasant, they have their upsides. At least the grey fuzz stuffing his skull leaves little room for any other thoughts to creep in.

While going back to sleep hadn’t really been his intention, he manages to drift off nonetheless, floating in a hazy space between wakefulness and true sleep. The practicalities of what he’s going to do if and when the rightful owner of the bed returns seem a distant problem when he’s focused mainly on surviving his hangover.

He’s still alone when he wakes again. He’s not sure what time it is, but enough has passed for the extra sleep to do him some good; he feels slightly more capable of playing the part of a functioning adult. After an intense staring contest with the ceiling above him, he grudgingly starts the laborious process of crawling out of bed.

His phone, when he encounters it in a jacket pocket, is on three percent battery. A single text notification is blinking on the screen.

He stares at it for a long moment before the sharp buzz of the low battery warning reminds him that if he doesn’t look now, he’s going to be left in suspense until he gets back to his own quarters and the charger therein. Billy’s contact details flash up on screen when he hits the notification.

_Had to go take care of some things. Don’t throw up on anything I’m going to need later. Good luck._

Goody snorts. Well, at least that explains why it had taken him so long to realise that he wasn’t in his own quarters. Not much detail remains after leaving the drift, not unless it’d been consciously sought out, but apparently he’d picked up enough of a rough sense-impression for Billy’s quarters to feel familiar. Hopefully he’s also retained enough of a sense of their location in the shatterdome to be able to navigate back to his own without expending too much brainpower.

The corridors remain mercifully quiet as he makes his bleary-eyed way through them, trusting the echoes to guide him. This is far from the most pathetic state in which he’s had to drag himself back to his own quarters over the past few years, but even so, he’d rather avoid having to speak to anyone until he’s at least showered and had a coffee.

When the door clangs shut behind him, the familiar sight and scent of the quarters he’s called home for more years than he cares to specify wrapping in around him, he can’t help but feel a little foolish for not realising right away that he wasn’t here. Under the circumstances, he’s willing to chalk it up to not exactly being at his best when he first woke up. At least there was no-one present to play audience to that less than stellar moment, although it’s no stretch to picture the amusement that’s going to follow when Billy comes across that particular moment in their next drift.

It’s strange to think that once he’d taken it for granted, having someone else sharing his thoughts and memories. Of course, back then he hadn’t been carrying quite so much baggage into the drift with him; in that first handshake with Sam he’d had nothing more to hide than the same embarrassing fantasies everyone has, and a few less than charitable thoughts about certain of their coworkers. It’s a much harder road to walk now than it was.

But even with that thought in mind, as he sheds his wrinkled clothes and steps into the shower to wash away the faint but persistent smell of stale alcohol and sweat, he finds that there’s no apprehension in the thought of facing the drift again. Even in the handful of times they’ve put their connection through its paces so far, he’s already come to trust in Billy’s steady calm to keep him on the level. It stings what’s left of his pride a touch to know that he’s the weak link, the one who needs to be steadied and supported, but he knows that the only judgement he has to bear for that is his own.

There’s something soothing in the ritual of showering, the white-noise rush of the hot water and the billow of steam turning the rest of the world into something safely distant as he goes through the familiar routine of washing and shaving and rinsing off on mindless autopilot. By the time he shuts the water off and steps out he feels almost human again.

Coffee is definitely the next order of business. Coffee, and - if his still-tender stomach will allow it - hopefully something greasy and filling for breakfast. He dresses with less care than he normally would, more invested in working toward _feeling_ like some kind of functional person than donning the appearance of one. He adjusts his collar, gives the pale face in the mirror a tired smile, and turns to leave.

The breakfast rush is long since over by the time he washes up in the mess hall. It’s a mixed blessing of sorts. The relative quiet is a relief when he’s still feeling more than a little fragile, but it does mean that he’s left with whatever remnants have been slowly drying out under the heat lamps to be picked over by the stragglers. Fortunately he’s too hungry to be picky. Food is more of a medical need than a passing want at the moment.

Whoever coined the adage that hunger is the best sauce clearly never had to contend with a hangover. No other meal he’s had has ever been quite so satisfying as the plate of wizened sausages and rubbery, overdone eggs he manages to scrape together from the dregs of the communal breakfast. Washed down with coffee, it’s almost enough to have him feeling capable of facing the day.

Maybe it’s just him, but even with the lingering tendrils of hangover weighing him down, the atmosphere seems a little lighter than it has been these past few months as he makes his way through the halls of the shatterdome. There are more smiles flashed in passing, the tone of conversations a touch livelier. It’s amazing what it does for morale, having a pilot pair ready to fill the newly-named Viper Angel’s conn pod.

His feet carry him on autopilot to the stairs that crawl up the side of the loading bay, and out to the familiar old gantry overlooking the water, the salt tang of the sea almost disguising the lingering hints of smoke clinging to the rust-pitted metal walls of their sheltered little overhang. The sun is high in the sky somewhere above, the vault of clouds glowing with a diffuse ambient light bright enough to squint against. Rain is drizzling halfheartedly down from them in a fine, soaking mist. It’s a chill kind of damp that seeps into the bones.

He sets his back against the wall and absently pats his pockets, fumbling out cigarette pack and lighter. No matter what else may change, this at least is a constant: a few moments of stolen peace in the steady rhythm of inhale and exhale, and the familiar acrid taste of smoke.

He’s halfway down his second cigarette when Billy steps out onto the gantry.

He barely looks hungover at all, the bastard, wearing his usual air of inscrutable calm with an ease which Goody is presently too annoyed by to envy. He’d dearly love to know what it would take to put a dent in Billy’s composure.

Still, he at least has the common courtesy to offer his copilot a light; the wind whips loose strands of Billy’s hair around his face as he leans in, cupping a hand around the flickering flame. The cigarette catches, and he inhales, the distinctive tang of the smoke filling the air as he leans back against the wall and nudges their shoulders gently together.

“You look better than I was expecting,” Billy says, casting him a sideways hint of a grin.

Goody snorts, pocketing the lighter. “Be glad you weren’t there when I woke up.”

Which, of course, brings up the elephant in the room of the fact that he woke up in Billy’s quarters. He takes a contemplative drag on his cigarette and gives Billy as assessing a look as he can without being too unsubtle about it.

He knows from showering earlier that he’s not carrying any marks. There are none visible on Billy either, not that it necessarily means anything; clothes hide a lot of sins, and in any case, he knows with the utter certainty of the drift that Billy viscerally dislikes being marked. But given that he’d woken up still wearing last night’s clothes, and lacking any telltale tenderness, he’s not hugely concerned about anything he’d much rather remember having taken place. After the amount he must have had to drink last night, it’d be a little absurdly optimistic to imagine that he would have been remotely capable, even if the spirit had been willing.

He’s not sure how to admit that he doesn’t remember leaving the bar last night, much less anything that happened after that. But even if he weren’t too pitifully hungover to put together a convincing attempt at a lie, it’s hard to summon the motivation to try when he knows perfectly well that Billy will see the truth of it for himself the next time they enter the drift. So instead he gives a sheepish apology of a grin and admits, “I don’t remember a lot of last night.”

Billy huffs a laugh. “Somehow I’m not surprised.”

“Ignorance is bliss,” Goody says, giving a small shrug. “So long as I didn’t do anything I need to apologise for, I’m happy for it to remain a mystery.”

“You can judge for yourself in the next drift,” Billy says. Someone who doesn’t know him as well as Goody does might have missed the glimmer of amusement in his eyes.

The rain is getting heavier, the dark water below rolling and heaving as the wind picks up. They lean in a little closer, pressed together in a warm line from shoulder to hip, collars turned up against the all-pervading damp chill as the wind snatches their intermingled smoke away. It’s a sobering reminder that there’s nothing out there for five thousand miles but open water, and the breach.

They’re standing at the edge of the world; the last outpost before no-man’s-land. Come hell or high water, they’ll stand here for as long as it takes to make sure the edges of their world don’t crumble any further.

Billy inspects the end of his cigarette critically before pinching it out and tucking the remainder back into his pocket. He’s still for a long moment, apparently coming to a decision of some sort. Eventually he gives a low breath of a sigh. “So you don’t remember us talking last night,” he says, eyes on the horizon. It isn’t phrased as a question.

“No,” Goody concedes. When he chances another glance over, Billy is watching him with a thoughtful, considering gaze.

He can’t read what’s in those dark eyes any more than he can see whatever may be waiting beneath the white-capped waves breaking below. But unlike the monsters lurking beyond the breach, he isn’t afraid of whatever decision Billy is coming to. He trusts Billy. He may not have much solid ground to stand on left, but with everything he has left in him, he trusts Billy.

“I asked if now seemed like a good time,” Billy says eventually, calm and deliberate.

Goody’s breath catches. Of course he recognises the echo in what might seem like an odd non sequitur to outside ears. Lord knows he’s spent time enough dwelling on it, even if he hadn’t expected to do any more than that. He hasn’t had the nerve to bring it up again himself since the moment they’d shared in the drivesuit room after their first handshake, and Billy had seemed quite content to let lie. Until now.

“...what did I say?” Goody asks eventually. It’s a little disconcerting to be lagging half a step behind, especially when just over the past few weeks he’s grown so used to the periodic drop sims keeping them in sync. He doesn’t know what he _would_ have said. 

Billy looks away, giving a small shrug. “You were drunk,” he says. “I’m more interested in what you say now.”

Well, isn’t that the question.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a hard answer to give. It’s no secret that he’s been nursing an interest in Billy for some time, and he’s felt for himself that Billy’s hardly opposed to the idea. Surely when he’s being offered what sounds very much like a chance at something he’s wanted for so long, he shouldn’t even hesitate.

But while he no longer has to be uncertain of how his attentions would be received, he knows that wasn’t the only reason he’d hesitated to pursue something. He’s been rejected before; he can take it in good grace. No, if anything he’d been afraid of the possibility of a yes. Of having the chance and squandering it. Of falling short, as he has in so much since his heyday as a pilot. He knows what he is. Billy deserves better than that. Even if Billy apparently thinks otherwise, he still can’t quite shake the thought.

In the middle of a losing battle for the survival of their species is no place for anyone to be trying to build a relationship. They all, pilots especially, live with the knowledge that any seven-minute countdown might be the last they hear. But perhaps that only makes what time they do have all the more precious. Why fight to survive at all if they let fear rob them of the things which make life worth living?

Perhaps it’s better to make good use of whatever time they do have, than to wait for a good time that may never come.

“It doesn’t really,” he says eventually. “But it’s never going to, is it?” He casts Billy a soft, wry smile. “One could grow old, waiting for it to be a good time.”

Billy smiles back. He’s warm even through the heavy fabric of their jackets as he tucks himself in a little closer, turning in towards Goody. Huddled in against the damp chill of the wind, the shelter of their bodies creates a pocket of warmth, lit by the embers of the cigarette and threaded through with the lingering scent of smoke.

“At a bad time is better than never,” he says. He’s really quite stunning all windswept hair and the elegant curl of his fingers, fond warmth in his dark eyes and a smile curving his lips, and for an endless perfect moment Goody can’t imagine himself anywhere other than where he is.

He stubs his spent cigarette out against the wall and flicks it away, freeing his hands to settle with a self-assurance he’s not quite sure he really feels at Billy’s waist. The crinkle at the corner of Billy’s eyes deepens as they lean in a little more familiarly against each other, fitting like they were made for it. If they weren’t before, they are now. It’s no coincidence that there are so many couples among those copilots who aren’t related by blood. No pilot pair makes it as far as the conn pod without a solid foundation of compatibility and mutual trust beneath them, and once there, the raw honesty of the drift makes any latent attraction impossible to hide. He knows from experience that after enough time, the thought of sharing intimacy with anyone other than your copilot starts to feel strange and alien. There’s almost an inevitability about it.

They’re going to die in that jaeger. He can see it in his mind’s eye as clear as day, the blare of the alarms and the flashing red emergency lights and the last few moments of screaming chaos before it’s all torn into darkness and silence. It could be years from now, or it could be tomorrow. They won’t know which drop will be their last until it happens.

Whenever it comes, he knows in his bones that he doesn’t want to waste the time between then and now.

“I can’t imagine any time we had together wouldn’t be good,” he murmurs. Highs and lows will come regardless, but with everything in him, he believes that the highs will be sweeter and the lows easier to bear if he gets to share them with Billy.

The rain is growing heavier still, shrouding the open ocean in a haze of grey as it drums steadily off of the overhang sheltering them. Goody curls a little closer into their pocket of shared warmth, something light and breathless fluttering in his stomach for the way Billy mirrors the motion.

Sooner or later their cliff face will crumble, taking the ground out from beneath their lighthouse on the edge of the world. They all know it’s coming. But here and now they have a moment of peace and shared warmth against the howling cold, and the chance, however fleeting, at something good.

It’s enough.


End file.
